1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a manufacturing method of an optical waveguide device for widespread use in optical communications, optical information processing and other general optics, and an optical waveguide device obtained thereby.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an optical waveguide device achieves optical coupling by causing an optical waveguide to propagate a light beam emitted from a light emitting element or causing a light receiving element to receive a light beam propagated by the optical waveguide. The optical waveguide device has a structure, for example, as shown in FIG. 8. This optical waveguide device includes a light emitting element 2 disposed and fixed on a substrate 1, and an optical waveguide including an under cladding layer 3, a core layer 4 and an over cladding layer 5, in which a light beam propagates as indicated by an arrow.
For such an optical waveguide device, it is important to precisely align the optical axis of the light emitting element 2 and the optical axis of the core layer 4 with each other for the purpose of reducing optical coupling losses, so that an exact position adjustment is made thereto in two directions (a horizontal direction and a vertical direction) perpendicular to the optical axes. This, however, necessitates a special member for the above-mentioned position adjustment and requires tremendous labor to make the position adjustment, thereby presenting the problem of an increase in assembly cost.
To solve the problem, as an example, there has been disclosed an optical waveguide module serving as a light receiving and emitting element and including an alignment mark for reflecting or absorbing a position adjustment light beam at a position spaced a predetermined distance apart from a light receiving and emitting portion thereof (see, for example, JP-A-2005-134444).
The above-mentioned optical waveguide module has an advantage in that there is no need to use a special member for the position adjustment, but still requires the operation of making the position alignment by using the alignment mark of the light receiving and emitting element as a guide. Thus, the above-mentioned optical waveguide module has not solved the problem in the labor required to make the position adjustment.